Theda Bara Trivia

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Most of her films were unfortunately lost to a fire at Fox Studios. (imdb.com)

For a time, she became a victim of her own screen image. Making movies at a time when audiences thought that the character that the actor played was the person that they were in real life she often found herself ostracised publicly. Late in her career she would tell stories of being refused service in restaurants and one nurse's refusal to admit her husband into the hospital after an accident because the woman thought that she had caused it. Many of these stories were greatly exaggerated (mostly by Bera herself) but she told them to establish the kind of perception that she had given the public. (imdb.com)

She married British-born director Charles Brabin in 1921. After her retirement, Theda expressed interest in possibly returning to the stage or screen, but her husband did not consider it proper for his wife to have a career. Bara spent the remainder of her life as a hostess in Hollywood and New York, in comfort and quite wealthy. (imdb.com)

Made film debut in 'Two Orphans, The' (1915) (imdb.com)

Although she made more than 40 feature films between 1914 and 1926, complete prints of only six of these films are left in existence. (imdb.com)

Almost all of her forty films have been lost (only three survive, as of 2007), giving her perhaps the highest percentage of lost work for somebody with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (imdb.com)

Is reported that Neil Gaiman took inspiration on her, for the character of 'Deatj' in the Sandman Comics. (imdb.com)

Screen and stage actress. (imdb.com)

As a marketing ploy for Cleopatra (1917) Bara claimed to have the same astrological sign as the real Cleopatra. That is incorrect, as Cleopatra was a Capricorn and Bara was a Leo. (imdb.com)

In 1930, she lived at 632 N. Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills. (imdb.com)

Her mother, Pauline DeCoppett (1861-1957), born in Switzerland and was also Jewish, outlived daughter Theda by two years. (imdb.com)

The role of the vamp in A Fool There Was, which made Theda Bara famous overnight, was created on Broadway in 1910 by Katharine Kaelred. (imdb.com)

Promotional claims fed off the fact that her stage name was chosen because it is an anagram for "Arab Death." In reality, "Theda" was a childhood nickname for Theodosia, and "Bara" was a shortened form of her maternal grandfather's last name, Baranger. (imdb.com)

She was the first to utter the now famous but often misquoted line, "Kiss me, my fool." (imdb.com)

Pictured on one of ten 29¢ US commemorative postage stamps celebrating stars of the silent screen, issued 27 April 1994. Designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, this set of stamps also honored Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charles Chaplin, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, Zasu Pitts, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and the Keystone Kops. (imdb.com)

Tired of being typecast as a vamp, Theda allowed her five-year contract with Fox to expire. Her final film for Fox was The Lure of Ambition (1919). She left Fox but made only two features, The Prince of Silence (1921) and The Unchastened Woman (1925). She retired in 1926 after making only one more film, the short comedy, Madame Mystery (1926). (imdb.com)

Studios went wild promoting Bara with a massive campaign, billing her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. They claimed she had spent her early years in the Sahara Desert under the shadow of the sphinx, then moved to France to become a stage actress. The truth is that she never visited Egypt or France. They called her the "Serpent of the Nile" and encouraged Bara to discuss mysticism and the occult in interviews. (imdb.com)

Her screen persona was an exotic foreign beauty who was the ultimate "vamp" who would go through men like a shark. In reality, she was born in Ohio. Those who knew her claimed that she was a quiet, reserved woman that would be more likely found in a bookstore rather than a Hollywood nightclub. In the early 1920s, she married director Charles Brabin. This marriage ended in the mid-1950s when she succumbed to cancer. (imdb.com)

Sister of actress/writer Lori Bara. (imdb.com)